Tantalus
by Ikonopeiston
Summary: What does the Afterlife look like?


10/8/06

The characters involved in this story are the property of Square Enix. I have no ownership rights at all and am merely using them to explore certain aspects of philosophy.

**Tantalus**

He was dead. That was the only thing of which he could be certain in the world in which he found himself. He was lying on his back, his limbs sprawled out in an uncontrolled manner, in some featureless landscape where he felt nothing. He could not move; his consciousness held captive in a frozen body. He was not sure if what he saw came through his eyes or some different sense. Nothing was clear, being obscured by a dense fog or thickness in the air. The atmosphere lay heavily upon him; he wondered if it was that which kept him from rising or even shifting his position.

He did not know his name or his own history. That seemed of little moment to him. He was on a vast plain or so he thought. The pervasive, all enveloping fog made it impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction but there was a sense of great space around him with the particular empty feeling found only when one is alone in the landscape.

He was dead, He knew that - or rather - he believed it. There was no evidence available to either prove or disprove the fact. It did not occur to him to check his body since the very concept of physical existence no longer had meaning.

It was a floating world with little sensory input to affect his understanding. Was it existence? That too was problematic. Did the mind still function? What was thought? Why? Where? Why?

Lights flickered occasionally through rifts in the heavy palpable miasma. They came and went in dense clusters like sparks rising from campfires when a resin-filled log breaks apart.

It was a room, not very large but crowded with furniture, chief among which was a massive bed with lavish hangings. He was seated in a deeply cushioned chair, his legs spread out carelessly in front of him toward the woman in the skimpy shift who knelt at his feet, tugging at his high polished boots. He watched her contemptuously as she struggled and gave a short barking laugh when she tumbled backward holding the left boot in her hands.

"Now the other and then you can deal with the rest." He spoke with the complacency of one who knew he was in charge and enjoyed the knowledge.

The silent woman removed the other boot and turned her attention to the various buttons and lacings of his other garments. He made no effort to assist her but sat still while she clumsily removed his clothing. When he was naked, he shifted himself to the bed and ordered, "Now it's your turn."

In a very short time, she was bent over him, submissively servicing his needs while he pinched her nipples and groaned his pleasure. When she had finished her duties, he casually dismissed her with neither thanks nor payment and quickly fell asleep.

He could not see himself. His eyes could move no more than any other part of his body. There was a peculiar lassitude which affected him and robbed his will of any urgency. His thoughts were unconcerned, unpersuaded that there was anything he could or must do.

Then he was in control of his body again, moving forward with an easy grace. A woman awaited him among the mist. She looked familiar in the way one remembers a dream in the first moments after wakening before it fades into all the other detritus of the sleeping mind.

The woman was very beautiful with a heart-shaped face and ringlets of pale hair curling like the petals of a chrysanthemum on her elegant head. She was dressed in a lavender dress which exposed a great deal of her ivory flesh.

He could see her pillowy lips moving and her hands gesturing but none of the meaning of her motions entered his mind. It was as though he stood near a hive of contented bees going about their sacred business ... which had no reference to him. He arranged his face into what he hoped was a pleasant expression and, resisting the urge to brush aside the cobwebby mist, made his way to the spot where she waited.

"You ... arm... leg... Nice to ... love." Fragmented scraps of words emerged as he drew closer. But still there was no coherence, no meaning.

To his inner bemusement, he found he could not speak. He could form the shapes with his lips, tongue and teeth but there was no means of propelling the forms into the air. His hand reached through the foggy barrier to touch the woman and assure her of his attention, only to vanish as it penetrated the greyness.

But he had to tell her ... tell her what? Was there something important he needed to let her know? The frustration of the situation made a cascade of small sparks spill through his shape, distorting it momentarily.

The beautiful woman buried her porcelain face in her hands and wept as he observed her dispassionately.

It was a room, somewhat larger than the first with no bed, just a cot, and the walls decorated with instruments whose apparent use was disconcerting to the unwary eye. He looked at them with discrimination, wondering which would be most amusing to use this day. In his effort to decide, he glanced back and forth from the selection to the only other person in the room.

A man in a canvas smock stood forlornly before him, hands clenched and bare feet seeming to grip the splintered floorboards. The man swayed as though about to stumble and continually recovered himself only to begin the pattern anew.

"What do they call you?" He asked indifferently.

"I am Uffin. Why do you ask?" the man in the canvas smock answered.

"It adds to my pleasure to know the name of the person I'm dealing with. Keeps you from becoming blurred in my memory." He raised an eyebrow, surprised at himself for responding.

"You remember us?"

"Of course. Now be quiet. I must choose." He turned back to the wall and took down a knife with a sharp, short blade. "Ah." He weighted it in his hand. "This will do, I think. Come here."

Uffin moved forward obediently. "May I know your name?"

"It is not for such as you." He raised the knife to the tip of Uffin's chin.

"I think I know it; you are famous. You are -" The remainder of the words were lost in the first scream.

When he was done, the man in the red uniform tossed the knife aside, not noticing that it fell on the crumbled body of Uffin, a body which had long since stopped moving.

A foul odour permeated the coppery air and made his nostrils flare in disgust.

It was not a room. It was a cell. The captain in his crimson uniform stood before the defiant prisoner. Behind him, three soldiers waited for their orders.

"You will not tell me what I need to know?" It was a final, formal question. "Then I have no choice."

The captain turned aside, ordering his underlings. "Strip him and two of you hold him still."

When it was done, the captain handed a thin glass tube to the third soldier. "Insert it, then break it."

That done, the captain turned to the screaming prisoner. "You should have told me when I asked. I shall now have you returned to the holding pen with the others and they will be less reticent - I feel sure they will be less reticent."

The prisoner was dragged from the room, leaving a thread of blood marking his path, his wails fading into the distance. The captain went to his delayed breakfast.

Then he was somewhere else, looming over a form sprawled like a discarded marionette. Time passed. He was neither bored nor conscious of the passage. Slowly he became aware of a hunger gnawing at his vitals. There was something he wanted so fiercely that the desire almost dispelled the blurring which surrounded him. He could almost feel again, the longing was so great.

The Great Lady, Lady of Darkness. The one for whom he lusted! He could imagine her embrace quickening his senses and sharpening his perception of himself and his surroundings. But ... had he not lain with her already? The memory of that consummation was almost within his reach. Then it was gone.

Time passed. He was unaware.

The woman wrapped her limbs around him, clinging closely to his body. Her hand rested on his chest and her eyes searched his face. "You are still alive." It was neither a question nor an observation. It was something she had said many times in the past and would continue to say into their shared future. "You are still alive?"

"Yes," he murmured, stroking her cheek. "I'm alive."

"Nooj," she whispered into his smooth torso. "Stay with me."

"As long as I can." He enjoyed the touch of her skin like heavy cream in its pale smoothness. "Sleep. We have far to go."

She nuzzled ever closer, the pewter coloured spikes of her hair brushing against his chin and making him smile.

The small brilliant explosions increased in number and frequency and muted sounds assaulted his hearing. They were like needles into his ears for all the softness of their volume. He was not sure what they meant - those faint moans and sighs, the nearly inaudible howls and shrieks. Had he possessed hands, he would have attempted to block the sensations but all he could do was to aimlessly shake his head from side to side like a tormented beast.

The contents of his mind were taking a sort of shape as he sluggishly moved down the maze-like corridors of thought. Had he been given a name and what did it mean to have a name? If he took ownership of an identifier, would he be something other than this mass of something in this somewhere? It was too confusing, too hard to shape. Easier to sink back into the nothingness. But there was this buzzing, pestering thing just out of reach. This gadfly which would not let him rest again.

He looked up at the monstrous shape hovering over him. His sword could not quite reach the belly of the beast, not even when he leapt and lunged. With a final effort, shouting so that his lungs almost tore, he flung himself at the creature and pierced its hide, spilling a hideous, stinking ichor over his body and his surroundings. The enemy cried out with a sound almost beyond the range of hearing and ... pain, loss, destruction. Pain ... loss.

He stopped in surprise. Was he assembling himself from the fragments which swirled about him like snowflakes in a blizzard? If this was happening then to be possessed of a name would let him set a center around which all the other bits and pieces could coalesce. Was that his name? The sound was a strange one which did not seem familiar. Was any of it real? If so, what?

He found himself garbed in something heavy and moving clumsily across the featureless plain. A cane in his left hand assisted his halting steps and felt oddly comfortable in his grasp as though he had held it before. The left leg swung, unbending and graceless.

A woman waited at the edge of his vision. A different woman. This one was taller, slim and muscular with a proud confident air. Her pewter hair was pulled up and back, tumbling over her forehead. Her crimson eyes pinned him with an unrelenting gaze.

Crimson eyes which were unique and caused him ... pain. Was that meaningful? The thought skittered between the synapses of his mind like light through fingers. It was there ... not there.

Knowing there was nothing to be gained, he would have turned away from her but was unable to do so. He was propelled like an automaton toward the figure in black.

"Here ... No ... wait... love ... own." As they had before, words began to take shape. "Far ... speak ... love."

It was always the painful memories which came back most easily. He had heard once that the mind did not hold the memory of pain but he did not believe it... not fully. if his mind did not recall, his body did.

Time passed or could it be called time in a place where such a concept did not exist?

It was as though his brain were being constructed slowly and erratically. Images, sounds and events came into focus with no particular order. It was like an intricate crystal shape being reassembled from glittering shards of splintered glass. The lines of the break remained.

With no thread connecting the recovered memories, he could not make the story of his life coherent. The plot went constantly awry; meaning did not identify itself.

Unaware of whether he was standing, lying, walking or floating, he existed in a void punctuated by threads and sudden explosions of imagery, sounds echoing around him. He saw without eyes, heard without ears, felt without a skin.

And it began to take shape. His name came slowly but inexorably; he was called Nooj. Around that germ of fact, much else quickly accreted. With no fuss, the fragments of self organized themselves, dropping into place with mechanical precision. Sensation returned to the appropriate organs. He could flex his fingers even though he could not yet distinguish between his natural hand and the prosthetic one or even be sure that his limbs were not all his own.

He was Nooj - the one called Undying, Immortal, Deathseeker. The subtle shiftings in his cortex continued as memories arranged themselves into a coherent whole.

It was always the pain which remained. There lay Kaithlyn at his feet, torn open and yet still warm with the trailing threads of life. He felt the cut of the lash on his back and counted each blow. Pulling himself up from where ever he had been, he savoured the slickness of the blood on his body and the drawing tightness of the rapid clotting. Pain! He was surrounded and encompassed by the scarlet darkness as he threw back his head and howled a challenge to whatever waited.

Gone was the flower spangled meadow ringed by cataracts of singing waters throwing rainbows like leis across the soft air. Darkness, agony and constricting images gripped him and scourged him into movement.

Another fall and he looked up to see a figure before him. He was sprawled like a discarded puppet at the boots of a tall slender woman who gazed down at him with pity in her glowing eyes. He fleetingly saw himself as he must have looked to the many he had punished for his pleasure and wondered if she saw the same.

"Poor Nooj. It not much of an afterlife for you," she said. "I think you deserve better but you always were stubborn and insisted on your own visions of how it would be."

"Who?" He was relieved to discover he could articulate again, that words were formed and sent out to other ears.

"You know me," she responded kindly, squatting down to his level. "I'm Paine - your last lover." She extended a hand.

Nooj reached to her, expecting his grip to be intangible. However, he felt skin against skin and almost sobbed with gratitude at the touch. "Paine!"

"In the flesh, more or less." She smiled and stood, helping him to his feet as well. "I'm afraid my name became a pun since pain is what we brought one another."

"Are you alive? Am I? I dreamt I was dead."

"It was no dream, my dear one. But I still breathe. Don't ask why we can touch and speak. I don't know. Although I think it is because I loved you greatly ... and still do." The last was murmured beneath her breath.

"Thank you for coming here. I saw you at a distance and could not reach -"

"It's all right." She embraced him and drew his head against her breast. "I can stay awhile."

He felt her hand spread against his chest, feeling as was her custom for the pulsing of a heart grown still but one she yet seemed to sense. She was warm against his chill, melting him with her love.

"I don't understand why I'm here. I don't believe in any of it." He sounded peevish even to his own ears.''

Paine did not answer, only continued to hold him. It was a mystery to her as well but she was not inclined to question whatever miracle was permitting her to be with him again. "Do you remember things?"

"I think so." He looked down at himself. "This is all very confusing. Sometimes I have my own arm and leg, other times ..."

Then she was gone and he felt nothing but the enclosing darkness, the undefined surface of the plain. All his senses seemed to have shut down. A dull droning filled his ears and he moved in a flat world with neither scent nor savour. It had obviously been the presence of Paine which gave sweetness and flavour to this place. She had been his soul, his lamp and now he was bereft again.

Desperately, he sat about trying to re-create her. From his thoughts he drew the particles of his lover. Each bit was carefully checked and tested before being added to the armature. But his memory was imperfect and the simulacrum was smudged and inexact; the features slid out of place and she was nothing like the Paine who lived and loved. When he embraced that which he had made, it was only an assemblage of rags and sticks with nothing of the vitality he had reached for.

"Is this to be the way it must be?" Nooj wondered aloud and could not hear his own voice. Nothingness surrounded him. A cold, thin wind began to blow, shredding the form he had made, sweeping away the fragments of the Paine travesty and tugging at his own form. He looked down and, with a certain sense of the inevitable, observed that his left arm and leg were no longer flesh but rigid and heavy machinery. The hope which had animated him for a short period metamorphosed into bleak acceptance of his fate. Destiny held no mercy for such as he.

This was the eternity he had expected, the one he had earned by the years spent doing what he had to do. He deliberately emptied his mind and prepared to endure. Silence.

9


End file.
